Organizing and actions to resist the moral and financial bankrupting of the U.S. through wars against the poor, at home and abroad.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

#SuperTuesday Of Doom

Cartoon used with permission.

My aunt, who is Australian, emailed me this morning as news of U.S. Super Tuesday results reached her: "Do something, do anything...or we'll all be floundering through the worst period in the history of the USA ever, and ever, and ever."When I was a young history major the essential question was: How could the German people let the Holocaust happen? Now that I have lived through the last 59 years I understand exactly how they could. And the role of the media then in Germany was negligible compared to its pervasive hold on my country today. U.S. "news" magazines declared the demagogue with the bad hair the front runner months ago. And his name recognition was already sky high as the result of his horrid reality show, and using his own vast wealth to buy air time and notoriety.

The Central Park 5, who served between six and thirteen years in prison for a crime they did not commit.
Source: New York Daily News

His racist street cred dates all the way back to the Central Park 5, a group of young men of color wrongly accused and incarcerated over a violent attack on a white woman in New York City in 1989. The future demagogue with the bad hair was a real estate and media mogul at the time, and his role in whipping up sentiment to execute the five young men is described here.The media-fueled ascent of the demagogue with the bad hair is designed to pressure us into supporting the party that does this:

So, sorry, I won't be supporting the warmongering Democratic candidates either. Bernie Sanders is a lot of hot socialist-sounding air à la Obama; he is a Zionist, and he fought hard for military contracts, among them the F-35 jet, in Vermont. Because, "jobs." Right. Hillary has more blood on her hands because she has had more power for longer, and the Democrat Party leadership is rightly scared that their heavy-handed tactics against grassroots support by naïveBernie followers will cost them the election. But anyone running with a D after their name will represent the same corporate interest as people running with an R after their name.

I will be caucusing here in Solon for the Maine Independent Green Party this Sunday, expecting we will nominate Dr. Jill Stein for president. Sure, there's little chance she can win since the electoral system makes sure we only get to choose between two corporate parties, but does it really make much difference which celebrity spokesperson for the corporations who own the U.S. government is elected? Black people are gunned down constantly by police now even with a Black man in the White House. At least the Greens are on the ballot in Maine, and I am happy to do some of the work to keep them there.

I think that the economic crash and bank bailouts of '08 will one day be seen as a turning point. The working poor in the U.S. took it in the teeth, and Occupy Wall St. scared the crap out of the 1%. After people coming together to effect change were violently evicted from their non-violent tent cities around the country, police and demagogues went into overtime inciting racial hatred.

What supporters of the racist demagogue are really afraid of is that they will never compete successfully with someone as beautiful, intelligent and educated as Dr. Suzanne Barakat, whose family members were shot for being Muslim in North Carolina last year.

If people in the U.S. understood where their real interests lie, they would support the Green Party whose platform calls for slashing the military budget and funding sustainable energy, free college education, universal health care, and debt relief for the people. But the corporate media will make sure that the vast majority of them never know they have a choice except the ones labeled D and R.To my aunt: I will keep working to get real information out to people. Because if voting really changed anything, they wouldn't let us do it.

1 comment:

The revolution is coming, but if it is to be successful, it must be nonviolent. Looking at the terrible confusion and anger in this country, I have to really work hard to not despair. It will be a waste of effort and lives if we haven't organized enough to out maneuver the violent thugs who will be brought in against peaceful people as we saw in the hopeful Egyptian Spring and the Syrian resistance. So much hopeful resistance has devolved to the present tragedy. When I think of the terrible waste as climate change exacerbates the desperate situations of so many...bombs on the farmlands, the fragile desert, the essential forests... There is an empty insanity lurching around in mindless death throes that imperils us all. I feel a fragile and flawed tool in the face of so much stupidity and destruction. But, I am called to continue to work for peace and sanity. I won't, I can't, give up. Love, Eliz